Wednesday Links: Collective Dissatisfaction with Art Movement Names

Under Bloomberg, New York City has gained its largest homeless population yet. In a 10-page-long report, Ian Frazier wraps his head around the current mayor’s policies and the city’s legal stance on the right to shelter, all set amid interviews with dozens of the city’s homeless. [The New Yorker]

The Chicago Arts Club showcases contemporary art—in private. For the last 100 years, this League of Extraordinary Art Collectors only gave members exhibition-viewing privileges. That is, until artist Josiah McElheny convinced the club to open its doors to the public for his current exhibition there. “I hope that students [go], and get the free lunch and cocktail.” [Chicago Magazine]

From the sounds of it, Ragnar Kjartansson’s Tate commission “Variation on Meat Joy” won’t be as daring as Carolee Schneemann’s original bloody bacchanal. The “new online performance work” will “play with the modernity of an internet performance” by featuring actors dressed in 18th-century costumes, each dining on a steak near microphones that amplify their guttural, chewing sounds. Sure. The work screens online tomorrow night at 8:00 PM in London (or, for many of our readers, 3:00 PM in New York.) [Tate]

A video of Rhizome’s Post-Net Aesthetics panel discussion is now online. [Rhizome]

Ben Davis discusses why “socially engaged art” (SEA) isn’t a useful term for discussing art and activism. It “contribut[es] to confusion rather than clarifying stakes, by creating a hybrid category of art-politics.” [A Blade of Grass]

Just when you think the Banksy media circus can’t get any more absurd, artists Dave Cicirelli, Lance Pilgrim and George Gross sell out a booth of fake Banksys, complete with certificates of “inauthenticity.” This is stencil art. In a particularly aggrandizing statement, Cicirelli notes that their works were exactly the same except that they were fakes and “the public consciousness had changed.” [The Huffington Post, Animal]